and to deposit it before the effigy of the emperor, promising not to put it on again until he should have received it from his hand, and that in Rome itself. This was done (63). By this humiliation there was no change in the fact that the Roman general, instead of waging the war intrusted to him, concluded peace on the terms rejected by his government.[37] But the statesmen who formerly took the lead had meanwhile died or retired, the personal government of the emperor was installed in their stead, and the solemn act in Rhandeia and the spectacle in prospect of the investiture of the Parthian prince with the crown of Armenia in the capital of the empire failed not to produce their effect on the public, and above all on the emperor in person. The peace was ratified and fulfilled. In the year 66 the Parthian prince appeared according to promise in Rome, escorted by 3000 Parthian horsemen, bringing as hostages the children of his three brothers as well as those of Monobazus of Adiabene. Falling on his knees he saluted his liege lord seated on the imperial throne in the market-place of the capital, and here the latter in presence of all the people bound the royal chaplet round his brow. [Sidenote: The East under the Flavians.] The conduct on both sides, cautious, and we might almost say peaceful, of the last nominally ten years’ war, and its corresponding conclusion by the actual transfer of Armenia to the Parthians, while the susceptibilities of the mightier western empire were spared, bore good fruit. Armenia, under the national dynasty recognised by the Romans, was more dependent on them than formerly under the rulers forced upon the country. A Roman garrison was left at least in the district of Sophene, which most closely bordered on the Euphrates.[38] For the re-establishment of Artaxata the permission of the emperor was sought and granted, and the building was helped on by the emperor Nero with money and workmen. Between the two mighty states separated from each other by the Euphrates at no time has an equally good relation subsisted as after the conclusion of the treaty of Rhandeia in the last years of Nero and onward under the three rulers of the Flavian house. Other circumstances contributed to this. The masses of Transcaucasian peoples, perhaps allured by their participation in the last wars, during which they had found their way to Armenia as mercenaries, partly of the Iberians, partly of the Parthians, began then to threaten especially the western Parthian provinces, but at the same time the eastern provinces of the Roman empire. Probably in order to check them, immediately after the Armenian war in the year 63, the annexation was ordained of the so-called kingdom of Pontus, _i.e._ the south-east corner of the coast of the Black Sea, with the town of Trapezus and the region of the Phasis. The great Oriental expedition, which this emperor was just on the point of beginning when the catastrophe overtook him